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Texas Instruments has just launched a successor for its 16-bit MSP430 MCU family with MSP432 MCU series featuring a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F core, a DSP, up to 256 KB flash, up to 64 KB SRAM, and according to the company ” delivering a ULPBench score of 167.4 outperforming all other Cortex-M3 and -M4F MCUs on the market”. The new MCU family targets consumer & portable electronics, building & factory automation & control, smart grid & energy, healthcare & fitness, and wearables applications.

The kit includes the board, a micro USB cable, and a quick start guide.

Software examples and hardware design files have been released for the board. Development can be performed with MSPWare Software Development Package either from the desktop or within a web browser. MSP432 MCUs are also said to support real-time operating system (RTOS) such as TI-RTOS, FreeRTOS and Micrium uC/OS.

MSP432P401RIPZ MCU is already sampling, while other upcoming devices will be available later, and pricing starts at $2.15 US in 1K units. MSP-EXP432P401R LaunchPad kit will sell for just $12.99, and the company can also provide MSP-TS432PZ100 target board for $89. You can find more details, including documentation, tools, and software for the boards, on Texas Instruments MSP432 product page.

The first time I heard about Texas Instruments Sitara AM437x was via a TechNexion EDM-CT-AM437x system-on-module back in 2012, but Texas Instruments Sitara Cortex A9 processors development seems to have dragged a little longer than expected. Nevertheless, the company has now formally announced their Sitara AM437x ARM Cortex A9 SoC targeting automation, IoT gateways, and other industrial applications, and featuring four PRUs (Programmable Real-time Units), and support for dual camera for terminals with bar code scanning.

At launch there will be four AM437xprocessors: AM4376, AM4377, AM4378, and AM4379. The processors will all be based on a single Cortex A9 core @ 800 to 1000 MHz with 64KB SRAM shared with 32KB data cache and 32KB programmable cache, 256 KB L2 and L3 caches, a 32-bit memory interface supporting LPDDR2, DDR3, and DDR3L, a 2-port Gigabit Ethernet switch , two USB 2.0 OTG + PHY and the following other interfaces:

Some interfaces (HDQ, McASP, eQEP..) seem specific to Texas Instruments, and if you’d like to get a short explanation of these, I’ve updated my technical glossary.

The main differences between the four SoCs are related to the presence of a PowerVR GPU and EtherCat support as shown in the table below.

AM4376

AM4377

AM4378

AM4379

Graphics

N/A

PowerVR SGX530

PRU-ICSS

4x 32-bit Programmable Real Time Unit (PRU)

4x 32-bit Programmable Real Time Unit (PRU) + EtherCAT slave support

4x 32-bit Programmable Real Time Unit (PRU)

4x 32-bit Programmable Real Time Unit (PRU) + EtherCAT slave support

Total power consumption will be less than one watt in active mode, about 5mW in deep sleep, and less than 0.03mW in RTC-only mode. AM437x processors are available in 17x17mm, 0.65mm VCA packages.
Texas Instruments already have a software development kit based on Linux 3.x mainline and with a GUI launcher, as well as graphics and other demos. Adeneo Embedded also announced a Windows Embedded Compact 7 (WEC7) BSP for AM437x processors, SYS/BIOS RTOS with support for real-time industrial protocols will be available in Q3 2014, Android 4.3 or greater support will be released by a third-party in the fall of 2014. Other various RTOS solutions by Mentor Graphicsm, QNX, Wind River, Green Hills Software and Ittiam are also planned, but no timeline has been provided.

Texas Instrument AM437x Evaluation and Development Kits

The company has already readied an evaluation module based on AM4378 with a 7″ touch screen.

AM437x Evaluation Module (TMDXEVM437X)

TMDXEVM437X Kit has the following key features:

Sitara AM4378 ARM Cortex-A9 Processor

System Memory – 2GB DDR3

Storage – On board 4GB NAND and 4GB eMMC memory, 1x Micro SD/MMC

Vido Output / Display – 7″ capacitive touch screen LCD, HDMI output

Audio – Audio in/out

Camera – 2 camera modules

Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet

USB – 1x USB2.0 OTG, 1x USB 2.0 host

Other I/O – 1x UART, 2x CAN, 1x JTAG

Misc – Connector for Wilink8 (Wi+Fi + Bluetooth module)

Power – TPS65218 Power management IC

The development kit currently supports the Linux SDK, and sells for $599. You can find more information on AM437x evaluation modules page. Two other evaluation modules are schedule for later this year: TMDXIDK437X Industrial Development Kit based on AM4379 with 1 GB RAM, and no display but with industrial protocols support thanks to SYS/BIOS RTOS (Q3 2014 – $329), and TMDXSK437X based on AM4378 with 1GB RAM, a 4.3″ capacitive touchscreen (Q4 2014 for less than $300). Eventually, I suspect there may also be a low cost platform for hobbyists… Beaglebone Green anyone?

You can watch the introduction video below for an overview about TI Sitara AM437x SoCs, evaluation modules, and software solutions.

Texas Instruments has recently release a complete Linux based Zigbee home automation gateway based on BeagleBone Black development and CC2531 Evaluation Module Kit hardware which you can purchase for about $100 in total, and including Z-STACK Ubuntu gateway installer, as well as Z-STACK Home, a ZigBee Home Automation (ZHA 1.2) compliant protocol stack for the company’s CC2530 and CC2538 SoCs.

CC2531 USB Dongle Connected to BeagleBone Black

I won’t go into details about the BeagleBone Black as I have already covered it into details previously. However, the hardware has slightly changed since the initial release, as the 2GB eMMC has now been replaced by a 4GB eMMC, and price has been increased to about $55.

CC2531 evaluation module kit is comprised of CC2531 USB Dongle which you can connect to the USB port of a PC, or in this case a BeagleBone Black, for 802.15.4 / ZigBee applications. TI also provides CC2531 USB Firmware Library on their site to let developers design their own software to utilize this part.

Home Automation Gateway Software Block Diagram

On the software side, as you can see on the diagram above, the company provide the kernel, drivers, Zigbee middleware, home automation client application, firmware update application for the BeagleBone Black,. and the Zigbee firmware for CC2531 USB dongle.

The full project also appears to be open source hardware. As you may know the BeagleBone Black is open source hardware which means all hardware designs can be downloaded and modified, and the company has also released the schematics, PCB layout, BoM, and PCB manufacturing files for CC2541 Zigbee USB dongle.So you could create your own automation gateway based on these documents.

You can find all documentation, software packages and hardware files, as well as links to order the required hardware, on Texas Instruments’ Zigbee Home Automation Gateway Reference Design page. The same hardware can also be used with another recently released reference design for a Zigbee gateway for lighting application, which also includes all resources necessary to try it out, and make your own. It also includes example applications for local and remote control of ZigBee nodes, including Android and Java-script for cloud connectivity agents and C-clients, as well as Wiki that’s currently missing for the Zigbee Home Automation Gateway reference design.

Texas Instruments Tiva C Series TM4C1294 Connected LaunchPad is an evaluation kit for the Internet of things with a Cortex-M4 MCU (Tiva TM4C1294), an Ethernet port, and USB interfaces for power and debugging. At $19.99 including shipping via Fedex, it’s one of the cheapest ways to get devices online. I’ve purchased one via TI e-Store, and already received it. I’ll post some pictures of the kit, go through the Quick Start Guide, and provides links to resources to go further.

EK-TM4C1294XL Connected LaunchPad Unboxing

I’ve received the kit in the package below with feature a QR Code linking to http://www.ti.com/launchpad, as well basic specifications (refer to my previous post for specs), list of tools (Code composer studio, Tivaware, Keil, IAR…) and package content.

In the box we’ve got the board itself, a retractable Ethernet cable, a USB to micro USB cable for power and debugging, and Connect LaunchPad Quick Start Guide.

Board, Ethernet & USB Cables, and Quick Start Guide

The Quick Start Guide describes the boards, the different pin on header, and how to get started. You can find both sides of the document here and here.

Top of the Board (Click to Enlarge)

A closer look at the board shows the Ethernet port, a micro USB port, two user’s buttons as well as wake & reset button on the left, the MCU is in the middle, and the debug part on the right of the board with another micro USB port. Close to the MCU, you also have several jumpers to select the power source (ICDI (In-Circuit Debug Interface), OTG, and Boosterpack), as well as some selections for CAN and UART. At the bottom you’ve got a breadboard area, and there are also 4 Boosterpack headers (male) on the board.

Bottom of the Board (Click to Enlarge)

On the back of the board we’ve got the female headers for the BoosterPacks and description, as well as the MAC Address.

The first time I open the box, I felt the board to be larger than I expected. The above photo shows the Connected LaunchPad next to an Arduino Leonardo clone.

Getting Started with Tiva C Series (EK-TM4C1294XL) Connected LaunchPad

The board is preloaded with an application that connected to a Cloud based platform called Exosite. The very first thing you need to do is to register your board via ti.exosite.com. This requires registration, and you can also use you Google+ or Yahoo account for this process. After login, go to Click here to add a new device to your portal, click “Select a supported device below”, and “EK-TM4C1429XL Connected LaunchPad”.

Click continue to enter the MAC Address (found at the back of the board), a device name, and the device location as shown on the screenshot below.

Click Continue and confirm at the next step. The device setup is completed at this stage.

This following step is optional to get started, but if you want to access the serial console, you’ll need to install drivers. It appears many of the tools are available for Windows and Linux (CCS and TivaWare), but the Quick Start Guide mentions a Windows PC is required, so that’s what I used. You’ll need to download Stellaris ICDI Drivers and extract spmc06.zip yo your computer.

Then connect the Ethernet cable between your board and your hub/router, and the micro USB to USB cable between the board and your Windows PC, which should then detect a new hardware. Select to install your own drivers, and select the path “spmc016\stellaris_icdi_drivers”. This will install “Stellaris Virtual Serial Port“. After this is complete, Windows will still detect a new hardware again, twice, repeat the steps above to install “Stellaris ICDI DFU Device” and “Stellaris ICDI JTAG/SWD Device“. If case you have issues, you can check the full instructions (PDF).

Now you can go to the Device Manager, to check installation is complete, and the serial port number, COM7 in my case.

You can now start Putty or Hyperterminal, and setup a 115,200 baud 8N1 connection on your COM port to access the serial port.

Let’s go back to ti.exosite.com. Under “Device List”, click on your device to connect to it, and interact with the dashboard.

It will show the Junction temperature, update counters when you press the user’s buttons, and turn on and off two LEDs on your board. The response time was very slow when I tested it maybe 5 to 10 seconds. My Internet connection might be in cause, or the refresh rate of the dashboard.

The portal will also show a map with other Connected LaunchPad around the world (over 300 at the time of my connection), and a game of Tic-Tac-Toe using you board (which I haven’t tried). You can check the full website screenshot.

When you start the board for the first time, and connect to Exosite you can see the following log.

And if you type “stats”, you’ll basically get what you can see from the Exosite dashboard.That’s all for the first steps with Tiva Connected LaunchPad. Texas Instruments also has uploaded a 5-minute video showing the Quick Start Guide steps.

Going further

Texas Instruments redirect developers to www.ti.com/tool/ek-tm4c1294xl to access the software, drivers, and documentation, to start with “Project 0″ at www.ti.com/tiva-c-launchpad which for this board is Hello Blinky. The project requires the use of Code Composer Studio (SW-EK-TM4C1294XL-CCS), TivaWare (SW-EK-TM4C1294XL), and the ICDI drivers installed previously which you can get via http://www.ti.com/tool/sw-ek-tm4c1294xl. Please note that the download will require you to go through a ridiculous “U.S. Government export approval” form, but I got accepted immediately after application. During installation of CCS you may want to select a custom install, selecting “Tiva C Series ARM MCUs” only to avoid a large download and installation. I haven’t gone further for now due to lack of time. Beside CCS, Keil, Mentor Embedded and IAR Systems IDEs can support the board, and TI Tiva C Series MCUs.

Exosite
Shortly after you’ve registered your device on ti.exosite,com, you will receive an email from Exosite, directing you to development resources to use something than just the default pre-loaded app:

There are now many ultra low cost MCU development kit selling for $15 to $25 such as STMicro Discovery Board, but for this price, they’ll usually just feature the MCU, a micro USB, pin header, maybe and maybe some sensors, and they usually lack any form of connectivity, at least without extra hardware. With Tiva C Series TM4C129 Connect Launchpad, Texas Instruments brings a board that can be used for IoT application out of the box thanks to the addition of an Ethernet port. The board sells for just $19.99, which means you could easily make something like a connected 4-relay control system for about $25.

Beside the user’s guide, documentation is currently limited, and there are no hardware files for now. Having said that there’s an online workshop for the board using CCS6 & TivaWare 2.1 to show you how to get started.

Texas Instruments Tiva C Series TM4C129 Connected Launchpad is currently available for pre-order for $19.99, and is expected to ship within 6 to 8 weeks. Contrary to most other companies that charge a ridiculous shipping fee for their low cost development kit, sometimes more expensive than the board itself, Texas Instruments does not charge for shipping, so $19.99 is the total price you pay. I know for sure, because I’ve just ordered one :).

ISEE IGEPv5 development board announced in October 2013, and powered by Texas Instrument OMAP5432 dual core Cortex A15 + dual core Cortex M4 SoC, POWERVR SGX544MP2 and Vivante GC320 GPUs is now available for as low as 149 Euros. There are two versions: “IGEPv5 OMAP5432 Communication Edition” for hobbyists with limited support, and “IGEPv5 OMAP5432″ directly supported by ISEE. There’s also “IGEPv5 Custom Design” if you have specific requirements for your product.

So the community edition has an SoC clocked at a lower speed, features only 1 GB DDR3, lacks eMMC flash, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and can only operate in commercial temperature range. Like its big brother however, it does feature mSATA 2.0, Gb Ethernet, and USB 3.0 which are rarely found in low cost ARM Linux development boards.

IGEPv5 OMAP5432 Community Edition also has limited support, and can not be used in actual products:

IGEPv5 Community Edition is only supported by the IGEP Coomunity, ISEE is the manufacturer and don’t provide support for this product.

This product don’t include any Longevity program, all ISEE products include a longevity warranty it means that every product must be in the market for 10-15 years.

All hardware sold by ISEE include a extense warranty including software, support or hardware modifications, this product is NOT included and only the community support this product.

This product is Open hardware, no warranty exist in any documentation, software, this product cannot be used in any Industrial application.

This product is only for study, learn, prototyping … its not sold for any REAL final application.

ISEE offers professional support services & design (for free), this product is not covered by these services.

The company however does mention a product called “IGEPv5 little” with the exact same hardware as “IGEPv5 CE” and without the limitations listed above (e.g. ISEE support, usable in retail or industrial products…), but I could not find details at this time.

The company provides support for Ubuntu, Open Embedded, Android as well as others operating systems via IGEP Community Wiki, which currently includes a quick start guide and a link to IGEPv5 hardware reference manual. You can also have a look at the git repository for Linux, U-boot, and more, and access IGEPv5 CE support forum for any questions.

64-bit ARM based servers should hit the market later this year or earlier in 2015 with SoCs such as Applied Micro X-Gene or AMD Opteron A1100. ARM still has the lead in terms of efficiency with a lower dollar per watt ratio, but Intel is closing in with their new Avoton server-on-chips. However, there’s one aspect where Intel is clearly in the lead: standardization and compatibility. ARM is very flexible, and allow SoC designers to create more or less what they want, but it comes at the cost that most ARM based systems are not capable of running mainline Linux, and instead use vendor trees. With many applications, that may not be critical, but when it comes to data-centers, companies want to be able to run the latest Linux version with the latest security patches as soon as possible, and want to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO), so they don’t want to spend considerable resources to handle different hardware platform. This is currently not feasible, but ARM together with their partners, including silicon vendors such as AMD, Applied Micro Cavium, and Texas Instruments, and software companies such as Canonical, Citrix, Linaro, Microsoft, Red Hat and SUSE, have jointly announced the System Base Architecture Specifications to standardize all ARM based servers so that one single OS image can run on all ARMv8-A server.

The SBSA specification does not address the application layer, but it standardizes low-level CPU and SoC attributes such as timers, interrupt controllers, watch dog timers, performance counters and also specifies minimum hardware requirements that firmware and OS vendors expect to be present. To be compliant, server will also need to run industry standards for bootloader and firmware, with all hardware being describable or discoverable. There are three levels of standardization:

Level 1 – Based on Level 0 with extra requirements with regards to CPU Architecture, Interrupt Controller, Clock and Timer Subsystem, Watchdogs, Requirements on power state semantics, and Peripheral Subsystems

Most recent ARM SoCs, such as Opteron A1100, are likely to only support Level 0 or 1 at first. I haven’t read the specifications in details, but for example, Level 0 defines SoC with up to 8 CPU cores, Level 1 is still limited to a maximum of 8 cores, but adds minimum requirements for the number of PMU counters, watchpoints and breakpoints, and Level 2 supports SoC with up to 2^28 (268,435,456) CPU cores which is the maximum supported by GICv3 architecture.

If you want to find out the details, you can download the specifications from ARM website, after registration and accepting an EULA. Alternatively, since the document is non-confidential, the EULA is also listed in page 2 to 4 of the document, you can download it directly here.

CES 2014 is coming soon, and it will take place on 7 – 10 January, 2014, and we can expect some interesting SoC news. Samsung suggested they will unveil their 64-bit ARM SoC (Exynos 6?) at CES 2014, Nvidia will hold a press conference to “showcase new NVIDIA Tegra mobile technologies, gaming innovations and advanced automotive display technologies”, and Qualcomm has been quiet for now. However, several Chinese SoC vendors, namely AllWinner, Rockchip and Mediatek, have already announced what they will showcase at CES 2014, albeit with few details.

AllWinner at CES 2014

Allwinner announced will showcase their OptimusBoard based on their Ultra Octa Core A80 SoC, as well as 4G tablets powered by Allwinner A31/A31s, and dual-SIM phablets sporting A23 dual core.

AllWinner A80 Development Board (Click to Enlarge)

Allwinner A80 is an Octacore processor featuring four ARM Cortex A7 cores, and four Cortex A15 cores @ 2.0GHz together with an unnamed GPU offering 2x more performance over previous generations, and supporting OpenGL ES3.0 and GPU compute. This will certainly be a new generation of GPU from either ARM Mali or Imagination PowerVR SGX GPUs.

AllWinner announced the availability (to selected partners) of Android 4.4 KitKat SDK for their AllWinner A31/A31s, and the latest version of Android will be running on 4G tablets using these solutions.

Allwinner has slowly, and discreetly, started to enter the smartphone space last year, and the company will showcase dual-SIM phablets based on Allwinner A23 dual core processor @ 1.5Ghz, with 512MB RAM, and GMS-certified.

Rockchip at CES 2014

The company did not announce anything directly but the sent out invite for CES 2014 giving clues about what to expect.

We’ve found out about RK3288 last July, and it appears Rockchip will showcase their latest SoC during CES 2014. The Cortex A17 mentioned in the picture. above is most definitely a typo, as RK3288 is a quad core Cortex A12 processor coupled with an ARM Mali-T628 GPU. The processor should support H.265, but it’s still unclear if it will use GPU compute or have a dedicated hardware block, as well as 4G LTE.

Several sites have also reported Rockchip will display a Smart Glass Solution at the conference. The glasses will be based on RK3168 dual core Cortex A9 processor, and support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS, comes with a microphone and stereo output, as well as 720p display and 5MP camera.

Mediatek at CES 2014

Mediatek has put out a press release detailing what they’ll show at CES 2014, namely:

Other SoC Vendors

Another Chinese SoC company, Actions Semiconductor, announced they’ll showcase their latest tablet and multimedia solutions based on ATM7039 and ATM7021 SoCs, but without much details.

AMLogic did not announced anything for now, but I’d expect Geniatech based M801/M802 Android set-top box to be demonstrated at CES 2014.

I could not find anything about Broadcom, also some report the company will launch their own 64-bit ARM processor, just like Samsung and Qualcomm are expected to do.

Both Texas Instruments and Freescale have more or less left the consumer’s orientation application processor business to focus on the industrial / embedded part, but TI will showcase some IoT, automotive, audio, and projector solutions at the conference, and Freescale will host an “Exclusive VIP event“, but no details were provided, and nothing about i.MX7 or i.MX8.